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Thursday, February 5, 2015

Symphony, one of the UK's largest suppliers of fitted kitchen, fitted bedroom and fitted bathroom furniture, has boosted its business continuity procedures by teaming up IT infrastructure company, Onyx Group.

Symphony Group’s head office on Park Spring Road in Barnsley will have access to Onyx Group's workplace recovery facility in Rotherham in a move that strengthens their business continuity strategy.

Working with Onyx will mean that Symphony Group can maintain its office operations in the event of an emergency situation occurring at its existing facility. The company currently employs more than 600 people at its main manufacturing site in Barnsley and has a distribution site at Templeborough in Rotherham.

In the event of an incident rendering their head offices unavailable, Symphony can now re-locate staff to Onyx Group's recovery site, allowing them to use the desks there as if they were sat in their own office. By replicating their existing data across to the new site, they will have full access to their existing software systems and telephones lines.

The facility at Manvers offers access to a 250-seat workplace recovery centre and a 320 rack state-of-the-art Data Centre. From this site Onyx can deliver Cloud hosting and backup, colocation, IT support and security.

Ruth Rew, group IT manager at Symphony Group, said: "Having the support from the Onyx Group gives us great peace of mind. The service they offer means that if a situation occurred where we couldn't access our office, we could be easily relocated to Onyx's site in Rotherham.

"Onyx's Rotherham facility is ideally placed for our staff to access quickly if needed. Having access to their Workplace Recovery Centre means that any transition is seamless as our staff would be able to use our existing software and telephone lines, allowing them to continue their jobs as normal, just at a different site.

"Our partnership with Onyx enables us to get our business up and running as quickly as possible in times of emergency or disaster in order to support our nationwide network."

Neil Stephenson, CEO of Onyx Group, added: "We are proud to be supporting one of the UK’s most well-known manufacturers with their disaster recovery procedures.

"Companies can clearly see that our data centre is ideally located to offer assistance to businesses across Yorkshire, whenever they need us. Located with a superb transport infrastructure means that we are well connected, as well as being accessible during bad weather and not in an area liable to flooding.

"We are pleased that our services can give companies vital reassurances that they can continue operating no matter what happens to their facilities."

A Stockton-based company, Onyx Group celebrated its 20th anniversary last year and saw turnover approach £20m in 2013, an increase of 13 per cent on the previous year. It recognised a need to still have a local presence in key regions across the country and operates from ten sites. Onyx opened its Rotherham facility in 2012.